The Irony of my Name
by tarnished silver things
Summary: Kilmeny Potter was a normal girl, at first. Mute, she lives at St. Hedwigs Orphanage. She finds magic and meets a boy in her head named Tom. She wants to help her new friend,but will his secrets stand in the way? What about this 'DumbOldDoor' man? Fem!HP
1. My name is Kilmeny I am mute

Hi. My name is Kilmeny. I am mute.

Kilmeny Marigold Potter had written that a very lot in her eight years of life. She was a rather small child, growing up in a no-so-very-well-funded orphanage, but she was healthy enough. She had long, strictly straight, very dark reddish brown hair, and green eyes that 'looked like poison' according to nearly every, well, every, child in St. Hedwig's Orphanage and School for Children. She had a thin, elfin face, and a slow, sweet smile. She read her fair share, probably more, and could read and write in French, German, Chinese, Italian, and Russian. Oh, and English. She had a lot of free time without friends.

She didn't mind, though, really. That was just the way her world worked. Children did not like to be friends with people that they could not talk with, and she couldn't talk to them. She liked to read, and English-Insert-language-here dictionaries were easy to figure out. Kilmeny was good with languages, and tended to make up her own, just for the fun of it. She often thought about learning Baby Speak, but figured it was something easier done when one thought like a small child, and she tended to think like a grown-up. Still, she tried it. It didn't work out very well, though. Brand new dresses covered in puke, did not a happy Matron make. She was good at drawing, and liked to read books about psycology. She refused to read about what caused people to be mute though, she just couldn't stand reading it.

Oh, she knew it was petty of her, but she couldn't stand reading about the whys of and ways to cure people who were mute, when it was impossible for her to ever speak, thanks to getting sick when she was small and the relatives she had lived with at the time refusing to take her to a doctor. All the nerves in her throat had died, and her Auntie and Uncle were sent to jail for child endangerment and abuse. Her cousin, a pudgy blond boy, had been adopted by his Aunt Marge, who hadn't had the resources to take her in as well. So, off to St. Hedwig's it was. She did admit she was just a tad bitter about the whole thing. Okay, maybe a smidge more than a tad. Or a lot more. Bah.

Kilmeny found it rather ironic that she shared her name with a mute book charecter. Lucky her. And the bitterness arises. Bah twice. She was good at math, and liked numbers, and tended to write funny little stories about them. She matched the twelve colours in the crayon boxes up, by couples and their one child. Blue and Red have Pink, Purple and Green have Brown, Brown and Black are best friends, White, who was Yellow and Orange's kid, was in love with Pink. That sort of thing. She didn't tell much about it, because people looked at her strangely when she did. Assuming they could read her handwriting (_she_ could read it well enough...) or understood sign language She was very, very, _very _horrible at sports, and Language Arts class and Maths and Science. She did not work well with her age group, and tended to hole up into books. She thought that life was a very boring thing. But, in the February of her eight year, something strange and new and very not-boring happened.

She discovered magic.

Now, Kilmeny liked to look at things very, very logically. To her at least. To most people it was pure jargon. Bah three times. She _had_ magic, so, of course, she should use it. She had read lots of old fairytales, so she thought about probably perhaps more-likely-than-not using the magic that was in them. Too bad she didn't have a teacher, though. Oh well.

It was funny, she mused, what good could come of older girls insulting her dead parents. The girls dresses had all turned to funeral attire and they had clown make-up. Only after she was in her room had she allowed herself to think, 'I wished for them to see how I felt. Sad and on display. Oh my...' Though it shocked her that she had been able to do that, it never occured to Kimleny not to practice this strange new power of hers, and she spent a fair bit of time re-reading some of the older fairy tales, books with magic in them, and making lists of ideas to try. The final list ended up looking like this, once she had re-copied it all onto a clean sheet:

Abracadabra - create things.

Presto Chango - Change them.

Open Sesame - open things.

Just rhyming for spells might work.

Telepathy?

Wands - unlikely to work, likely just sillines.

Wish magic?

She planned on having it longer, but really, she only _wanted_ to do a couple of things, not control the universe. Why anyone would want to deal with that much paperwork was beyond her. She was right about the magic words working, to an extent, and the rhyming worked, but she couldn't get the hang of her wish magic idea. She had done it with the older girls, so why couldn't she now? She had felt lots of emotion... but she didn't get worked up easy. So, what if a lack of emotion worked instead? How could she go about that? Maybe... meditating? Would that help? She felt sort of... connected... to something in her when she used her magic, so... maybe. She had to try it, at least.

The second Monday after she had discovered her powers, Kilmeny let out a long, slow breath. She had read up on meditation, and was trying to do it, she had been for a week and a half, but it was hard. She couldn't clear her mind for more than a few minutes, at most ten. Breathe in, and breathe out, in, and out. How strange, it was almost as if she were... floating. Rocking like she was in the sea. It was peaceful and... magical? Just how she'd always imagined real magic would be. Real magic. _Real _magic. Real _magic._ _Real magic_! She was connected to her magic! She opened her eyes inside her mind, if that made any sense, and looked around.

It was smooth, and the water... magic... was purpley-blue-ish, and had silvery lights dancing off the surface, like starlight. And there was an island in the centre of it, made of warm reddish-orangie sand that just by looking at made her want to curl up in it's warmth. She willed herself closer. It felt like she was swimming through honey and clouds to get there, and the pale green sky let out some wind here and there, helping her reach the island.

There was a heart-shaped box there, beneath the ... stone trees dripping what looked like pure gold and apple juice. Like the Ichor she imagined when she read Greek Mythology. Uh-_huh_. Strange, but nice. The box was the colour of her eyes exactly, if not a tiny bit darker. It had fine, fine red lines running around the edges like celtic knots made of fire. As she stepped closer, a faint melody made her think of puffs of different coloured smoke, and the smell of Easter Lilies, and cinnamon and brown sugar. And there was a song coming from the air around it, like a half forgotten lullaby, from when she was very small. But, her Auntie and Uncle, when she lived with them, _surely_ they wouldn't have sung her a lullaby! She remembered being thrown into a cupboard, and dunked into cold water until she nearly drowned at their hands! So that left... her parents. Her _mother_. So what was it doing here? In _her_, for lack of a better term, magical core? It looked, or felt, like some sort of... protection?

But why would she need protecting? Surely it hadn't helped with her relatives. Had it? Would she really be dead if not for this little box? She was knealing down by it now. Kilmeny reached out a tentative hand to touch the box, and felt... whole. Happy. Like someone was watching out for and over her. But there was somethinh else. A black stain was spread across the lid, the celtic knots on it turned the colour of dried blood. It felt... not evil, but not good, either. Like something left in the dark. Or a cupboard under the stairs. Like she might... would... be if left with the Dursley family still. It felt unhappy, like a lost kid. Just _knowing_ she was going to regret it later, she touched the stain. Just before she did so, she heard a woman's voice say, 'No Darling! No!' Too late.

She was at an orphanage, different from her own, and it was sunny outside, instead of slushy and cold. Children were running around, and playing on the grass. She waled over to the shade, and made to sit down. She couldn't feel her body anymore. Where was she? The sign said Mrs. Cole's Orphanage in London, but that orphanage had been torn down over a year ago. She had watched. It had been old and delapidated, yet this one looked more like her own, in the sense that it was clean and well-kept, if poor. "Hello."

Kilmeny jumped 'Who in the world...'

"My name's Tom, and I'm... sort of the reason you're here." _How had he heard what she thought?_


	2. From blowing up Mum and Dad's nice house

_"Hello."_

_Kilmeny jumped 'Who in the world...'_

_"My name's Tom, and I'm... sort of the reason you're here." _

* * *

Okay, that was too convenient_. _Watching the boy, Tom's, face, Kilmeny signed, ;;How did you know how to answer what I was thinking?;;

"You're talking, silly." This Tom boy - tomboy, she snorted to herself - looked confused. He wasn't looking at her hands. Maybe he really could read her mind? "I am not reading your mind!" She glared at the boy.

She was mute! She did not talk!

"Why aren't you moving your lips?"

'Beacause I'm not talking, you ninny,' she thought moodily. Bloody mind reader. Tom cocked his head, thinking. Then he smacked himself in the forhead. What the...? "Of course! You're a telepath!" Tom said.  
Huh? He must have seen her confused expression, because he continued, "You touched the stain on the box, and now your here, where I'm stuck at, and your powers aren't repressed." Her powers were repressed?

Tom didn't hear her that time. Strange...

She thought 'louder' and he seemed to have heard her. Cool. "Here, follow me," Tom said, motioning her over to a window at the side of the orphanage, next to an alley. Tom climbed through the window after using a screwdriver he got out of a nearby crate to jimmy it open. "Come on."

They were in a small room now, with a wardrobe, bed, and chair in it. There were lots and lots of books in the corner, more than should fit there. Magic, she thought softly. Tom didn't notice her looking and knealt down by the books, never turning his back from her, and skimmed down through the titles. He made a soft, triumphant noise, and pulled a book from the bottom of a pile. The pile didn't fall. He flipped through the book, muttering to himself, "blocks, blocks, blocks... Blocks! Found it!" He acted Madam Lennard, the Matron's, boyfriend Nicky Carmichael, not another eight year old. Maybe she wasn't so strange as she thought? Maybe? Maybe not likely? And when had she become an optimist?

He placed the book under her nose. Magical blocks?

_'Magical blocks are forms of Black Magic, only surpassed by Horcruxes in their evil nature. While some are placed on exeptionally powerful small children so as to keep them from blowing up Mummy and Daddy's nice house with a temper tantrum, most are placed on a witch or wizard child before they can know what their powers are and siphon off any power the child could possibly have used while while said power was active, instead giving the magical energy that would have been used to the caster. They are notoriously hard to place, and even harder to break off if the subject is not a Telepath Major. As Telepaths of any sort are rare in the extreme, most blocks are thus left, so as not to completely break the subjects tie to magic, resulting in the deaths of both the Legilimens removing the blocks, and the subject. Ligilimens, see below for step by step instrustions on removal of blocks.'_

Blocks on her... magic. What the? She must have been mind talking, because Tom replied, "Right now you're inside the inside of your core, guarded by the purest magical protection there is, so the blocks can't touch you. I could remove them, if you want." He sounded almost... guilty, like an old man shown each and every one of his mistakes, shoved right under his nose- "If you're done pitying me," Tom snapped, moody again. Really, no need to act his age. Now he was laughing. Okay, this officially proved her theory that she was a fairy changeling. Humans were beyond her capacity to understand, psychology be damned. Tom laughed harder.

An idea trickled into her brain, and Kilmeny concentrated on being heard, 'OI! I'm right here! What in the world are you on about?' she shouted mentally. Er, telepathically.

"Okay, sorry-ish for laughing. But, as far as either of us can see, I," here Tom gestured to himself, "am eight years old, and you're telling me there's no need to act my age, after going on about how strange I act, like an old man. I, for one, found it humourous." That's it. The boy was senile. "I am not!" Kilmeny shook her head, grinning. She liked this Tom. Much nicer than Tommy Wilkeis, a rude boy with a boars snout for a nose at St. Hedwigs'.  
'I never introduced myself,' she... said? 'I'm Kilmeny.'

"I know. There are some advantages to living in your head."

'Can you come out?'

"Dunno, I've never heard of magic like tha-"

'Phooey! It's my head, so the magic'll work the way i think it will. Now, do you want out of my head?'

"More than any- Er, yes, I do."

Kilmeny wondered over his slight stumble over the words, but let it be. She grabbed his hand and tried to concentrate on the feeling of her magic wrapped up around her, like a soft and fuzzy blanket, and wished for it to take them back to the island. She thought that, maybe, the wish magic might work better here. This was supposed to be free of blocks, according to Tom. Then again, maybe she was trusting him too easily.

They were on the island, she could feel it, but Tom was slipping off. No! She wanted him with her, she told the magic. It agreed, unsure, and he was next to her, bewildered, but none the worse for wear. "Want me to remove those blocks for you?"

Nod.

Tom looked her straight in the eye, and next thing she knew, they were on a different island. In the shape of a block. Complete with A, B, and C on the sides. Really? "Jump up and down on it with me, Killie!" Tom shouted, grinning. Why not? If it helped. And it looked like fun! With someone her age! _Fun!_ They jumped up and down until the O on the topward face of the block collapsed, and a big swishing swirl of watery magic came out, only more solid. It was like it was made of some ever-changing substance, never deciding on one colour or shape. The wave... thing... dive-bombed her and covered her completely.

Then dissapeared. What the Jolly Ranchers? Tom was laughing again. Where was he getting that acursed giggle gas? She wanted some! Prat. "Your... You... H - h - hair!" he gasped out. Kilmeny touched her hair. It felt fine, and it was still the same shade of - PURPLE? She had purple hair? How, what, she - "Killie," Tom said, grasping her shoulder. Kind of like a brother. "Your a metamorphmagus, silly. A shape-changer. That's what the block held back"

Kilmeny stared at him with wide eyes. She was a shape-shifter. And there were MORE powers? Tom laughed again and they were on a pyramid this time, a floating red one. It had a darker red eye in the side of it, like an Egyptian heirogph. 'What's this one hold?' she asked. Tom didn't hear her. She repeated herself. He still didn;t hear her. She tried to shout it louder than a Bean Sidhe. That worked.

After Tom glaring and Kilmeny giggling silently for a bit, the boy said in a clipped tone, "Your telepathy."

They didn't jump on this one. Instead, they climbed it like a mountain, and chipped off bricks as they went. After a few feet, it began to crumble into itsself, until the top exploded like a cannon. The stuff coming out of it was different, again. It was like little bits of concious thought, and will o' the wisps, and Willy Wonka's chocolate teleporter all wrapped into one. It just swirled around her head softly, gently, like snowfall in a mild winter, and melted into her hair and face, mostly her mouth and chin area. It tasted like a cherry lollipop she got at a fair once, with buttermilk and strawberries and chocolate. And now she was hungry.

Before she could try out her new not-blocked telepathy, Tom moved them again. She could feel... feelings, vibes, coming off of him. Dark, like a festering wound, but it was healing, and clouded with sadness and guilt and worry and something she couldn't place. He seemed a lot older than eight years now. They were on a tiny toy sailboat, floating on her magic, and it looked sweet and cheerful, but it felt... evil.

She didn't want to asked what it held, but Tom told her anyway. "This is the next to last one, Killie. It holds your powers inside it, and the next, last, one holds in your mind magic. Although, it doesn't seem to be working too well." He smirked, and muttered, "You've got it coming to you you old coot." Who was he talking about? she thought softly, so that Tom wouldn't hear her. He didn't.

This one they just punctured the sides and filled with dark sticky goo that Kilmeny decided to conjure, for the fun of it. Tom said it was worse that tar, and to be glad this was just her mind, and her real clothes wouldn't get all mucked up.

The last block was the stain on the box. Tom froze when he saw it, and held her back before using a sharp stone to slice his hand open and pour his blood onto the stain, which promptly dissapeared... What in the? Tom still didn't hear her, but he must have guessed, because he said softly, "Don't ask, Killie. Just don't."

She didn't.

Yet.

But she would probably ask later why he was calling her Killie. But it was better than Minnie, like the matron called her. For now.

AN: Erm, yeah, i think JKR severely limited magic, even to the point where Tom, who has pushed the limits of it, doubts a lot of the stuff that made up my fantasy games and fairy tales as a kid. Yeah... I'm having Killie push them. A lot. This is (hopefully) not going to be a super Harry, er Killie, fic, but it seems fair to even the playing feild between Mold Pants and the poor girl, I should think. Anyhow, non-ver bal casting is supposed to be hard, just like wandless, but then, don't young witches and wizards do it all the time? Killie makes her own definition of magic, and tests it. She gets ideas from fantasy books, folktales, and her own creativity. To her, if you can think it, you can do it. I'm thinking of introducing our new duo to Dungeons and Dragons, Lord knows my family has enough of the books and manuels.


	3. Kilmeny, did I kill your parents?

_"Don't ask, Killie. Just don't."_

_She didn't._

_Yet._

Kilmeny and Tom sat on her bed, throwing pastry crumbs out the window as a treat for the sparrows that flocked the little alley outside. It was Kilmeny's ninth birthday, and because neither she nor Tom had money top spare, on their birthdays, instead of getting presents, they would find something to give to someone (or something) else. Kilmeny usually chose birds, and Tom mice.

It had taken a few months after they had met for Tom and Kilmeny to be able to get him out, but they had. They had decided that his birthday would have to be the day that he got out, so May Day it was. Kilmeny was rather good at getting him to agree with her without realising it. She still hadn't asked. They liked to explore magic, and found out a fair few things.

They could block each others' auras and magic, sometimes, and Tom was able to float himself float in midair. They figured out how to teleport a few weeks after getting Tom out, when Kilmeny was trying to run away from some bullies, they both knew how to get animals to do what they liked, create some sort of energy on their hands that was warm and cold at the same time (once, Tom rubbed the back of his neck where it was sore after he summoned the energy-whatsit and it stopped hurting. They were still looking into that, as it didn't always work.) They also figured out how to create a film of magic to animate the old globe on Kilmeny's nightstand. It was very fun to dip their hands in the cool blue shpere of water. Tom had figured out how to make tiny animated dolls, and now there was a tiny little merpeople city. There were a few castles on land, and people, too. Kilmeny was trying to figure out how to make charecters come out of books, like in 'The Great Good Thing' by Roderick Townley. She could animate grass to act it out, but she wanted to see if the actual charecters would come to life. And find out what the book Princess Sylvie was in in the book was about.

Tom was the one that helped her with figuring out ways to get magic to work when she was at a loss. He let her talk things out and figure them out her own way, instead of just ordering her about. She had decided that he was going to be her big brother. When he found that out, he had just laughed and said he should have expected it. Boys were very, very strange things, she thought.

"Breakfast!" yelled Cook. Tom climed off the bed and pulled her up, then bowed, pretending to be a courtier, or a prince.

Kilmeny giggled silently behind her hand and curtsied, 'Why thank you, my good sir,' she said telepathically, sending a picture of him in a red and gold prince costume like she saw at Hallowe'en once and her in a very long, old-fashioned princess costume. He laughed and pulled her out the door to find some food. Definitely like siblings.

It was later that day that they discovered something about Kilmeny. She could talk to snakes. Actually _talk_ to them. When Tom asked her about it, in English, she tried to reply, but couldn't. Thrice blasted irony. She tried again in Snake Speak, and it worked! She could talk, and Tom and snakes could understand her. Tom could talk to snakes, too, and liked playing with them, especially a green grass snake called Sabiyen. The funny thing about Snake Speak, though, was that Kilmeny and Tom didn't use their vocal cords when they used it. Kilmey had pressed her hand to her throat when she spoke in it, and it didn't vibrate like Tom's did when he talked normally. She had checked him, and his didn't, either.

They ended up talking for quite a while, and, after a few hours, when it was getting dark, Kilmeny tentatively asked Tom a question. It wasn't THE Question, but it was something that had been bothering her.

_*Tom,* _she asked quietly.

_*Yeah, Killie?*_

*Don't call me Killie!*

_*Okay, Killie.*_

_*Stupid boys... gah. Tom... why are you hiding something from me?*_

Tom sighed, and leaned back on his tree. _*I... I'm not really sure, Kils. For the same reason I don't like to look you in the eye or think about the past too much, I guess. It's just that... I don't think I was always in your head. I-I remember things, horrible things, in the 19_**30's**_, and then... I was in your head, talking to you, but there were little flashes in between, where I saw you, or things from your perspective, and just random moments i-in your life... I... remember, I guess... thinking evil, horrid things, almost, but it wasn't me, at the same time... Like an older me, a twisted, _hor-horrifying_ me. I had a sort of wand, I guess, and I blasted down the front door to a cottage, and a man, a lady with red hair, and a little baby were inside._

_*The man yelled at the woman, Lily, to run, take 'Meny and go. She grabbed the little girl and ran out of the room. I ignored her, and I said some funny words. I-I _killed_ him. I killed somebody, and then I walked up the stairs, like I hadn't a care in the world, like what I'd just done was just a perfectly normal, day-to-day thing, and... I just blasted the doors as I went by, until I came to a nursery. The red-haired lady... she begged me to stop, to kill her instead, because she... she knew I wanted to kill her daughter. A **baby**. She had green eyes, like yours, and I killed her, too, just like her husband.* _Tom stared away at nothing in particular, horrified, but he stopped when Kilmeny wrapped her arms around him in a hug. _*Thanks. I looked at the baby, who was smiling at me, like it was all a silly little _game _to her. That her mummy would wake up any minute. The little girl had her mums eyes, exactly the same colour, and the colour the magic I used to kill them. She was tiny and pale, with a couple freckles on her nose. She had longish coppery-brown hair, and she just _smiled_ at me._

_*She saw my face and started to cry, I... I _hated_ that little girl right just then. I said those funny words, and, she didn't die. Instead, I felt like I was being torn apart, and one part of me died, another ran away, and me, the me here now, anyway... I was sucked into the girl. Into her head.*_ Tom turned a little and looked Kilmeny straight in the eye. _*I think that girl was you. Kilmeny, d-did I kill your parents?*_

Kilmeny didn't have an answer to that.

She just hugged him hard, and wouldn't let go.

Not ever.


End file.
